


Sap Juice

by hellkitty



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 04:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7419754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Midway through Season Two, and Swerve has decided the gang needs a special celebration. And by special, he means spiking the drinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sap Juice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SoDoLaFaMiDoRe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoDoLaFaMiDoRe/gifts).



“You sure about this?” Whirl squinted at the taller mech. “Like, seriously, I’m invited? Me?” He waved a claw at his face. Frag, he wouldn’t invite himself anywhere other than a smelter. Eh, maybe the heart of a supernova or something. But the point was, Whirl did not get invited to many parties. And by many, he meant ‘any’. 

Skids nodded. “He did say anyone with a Rodimus Star. You have one, right?” 

“One?!” Whirl laughed, gesturing with a claw back into his quarters. “Have a whole fraggin’ wall full of ‘em.” Sure, half of them were stolen, but that wasn’t the point. He definitely had Rodimus Stars. 

“Hey, so...that one looks familiar,” Skids said, squinting over Whirl’s shoulder. “Is that mi--?”

“Miiiiiiiiighty awesome?” Whirl talked over him loudly. “Yes, yes it is. Because I am.” Near miss, there, Whirl. Nice save. Best save. A save that probably deserved….a Rodimus Star. “So, when’s this shindig kick off?” He waved his claws wildly in front of Skids’s face. “Hey, you can admire my awesome later. You said something about Swerve, and free drinks.” The last two words were quite possibly the two favorite words in Whirl’s language. Well, maybe after ‘overkill’ and ‘exploding explosions’. 

“Oh. In about a decaklik. He just wanted time to set up the bar.” 

“Excellent.” Why did it just feel so right to tap his claws together? 

“Uh. Whirl?” 

“What?” Shush, Skids, Whirl was scheming. Don’t interrupt a copter when he’s scheming.

“Maybe you should show up, you know, like, not right on time. ” 

“They might be out of booze by then.” PROBLEM, especially if one’s whole motivation was to score free drinks. 

“Nah, just, you know, a little after others have gotten there. To, uh, make a big entrance. Fashionably late.”

Big entrance? Oh, Whirl could like those words, too. “Yeah, well, you know me. I’m all about fashion.” Besides, it would give him time to plan a suitably awesome Whirlworthy entrance. 

***

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Skids watched Swerve tap a small barrel of that stuff he’d just picked up on shore leave. 

“Skids.” Swerve paused to plant his hands on his hips. “Do I have any other kinds of ideas?” 

“Honestly?” Because it would take a while to collate Swerve’s ideas into categories, mostly in a spectrum of bad to worse. 

“Of course not!” Swerve shook his head. “Look, Skids. We’ve been through a lot lately. And I mean a lot. We need to lighten up a bit. YOU need to lighten up a bit, for starters.” He reached for a glass, filling it, and sliding it over to Skids, where it sat, fizzing a little blue and pearly-like. 

“What’s this?” 

“Oh, just a little something special I whipped up for the occasion.” 

That did not set Skids’s mind at ease. At all. In fact, it set his mind in the opposite direction. “It’s not going to explode or anything, is it?”

“Tsk!” Swerve shook his head. “I’m a legitimate businessmech. What’d be the sense in offing my best customers?”

Well, that made a kind of sense, even if it did not exactly put Skids’s mind at ease. What else could he do but raise the glass in a toast, and drink it down, just as the door to Swerve’s bar whooshed open, to a crowd of mechs. 

“Did someone say….celebration?” Rodimus pushed in, first, his chassis polished to a blinding gleam. 

“I heard ‘free’,” Brainstorm said. 

“And I heard you getting excited about ‘free drinks’,” Ratchet scowled behind him. 

“Yeah, yeah! Come in,” Swerve was a flurry of movement, lining up a row of glasses on the bar, filled with the same swirly pearly blue as in Skids’s glass. “Maybe our Captain could honor us with a speech?” 

A quick skirmish fought itself across Rodimus’s face: his desire to party colliding with his love of making speeches. Speechifying won. “All right, just a quick one, though!” He swooped one of the glasses up. “To the best crew a captain such as myself could have asked for. And to adventure!” 

“Adventure, right. That’s what you call it.” Megatron held his glass, awkwardly, staring at the swirly blue for a moment. “I suppose I ought, as co-captain, make a speech.” A pause. “For those who are no longer with us.” 

“Ugh!” Rodimus elbowed him. “Way to be a downer, Megsy. Drink up, and maybe cheer up a little.” He took his own advice, downing his drink in one swallow. “Adventure!” he repeated.

“Adventure!” the others roared, raising their own glasses. 

***

Two hours later….

***

“Rodimus.” Ultra Magnus swayed gently in front of Rodimus’s table. 

“That’s my name,” Rodimus said, cheerily, if a little blearily. “You here to shut us down?” Because why else would Ultra Magnus be in Swerve’s? 

“No. I….” The large white hands fumbled with each other. “I have something I wanted to say.” 

“Yeah?” This could be interesting. Or awful. Or both. Rodimus pushed himself up, kicking his feet off the bench. “Grab yourself a seat and let’s hear it.” 

Ultra Magnus seemed grateful for the distraction of sitting down, at least for the moment it bought him. He cleared his vocalizer. “I. Er. What I mean to say, is.” His optics darted around the crowded bar, letting that non-sentence float in the air like a warning sign. 

“Yeah?” Color Rodimus intrigued. 

“Is that you are, uh, how shall I put this...a tolerable captain.”

Rodimus’s face fell. “Tolerable? Really?” 

“I mean, erm...competent.” Competent? Probably a compliment in Ultra Magnus’s ultra-tight-afted book, but still! “And inspiring.” 

AH! That was better, and Rodimus felt the grin bloom across his face. “I _am_ inspiring.” Glad someone else realized it, too. “Go on.” 

Ultra Magnus seemed befuddled for a moment. Probably just trying to choose which superlative adjective to use, Rodimus decided. He could wait. A little. 

“Er.” Ultra Magnus stared at his hands for a long moment. “I admire--envy, really--your charisma. The mechs follow you.” 

“Hey, they follow you, too.” 

“But that’s because I remind them of sanctions against the Autobot Code.” They followed Rodimus because, well, they wanted to. 

“Heh. Good point.” 

“What I mean is….” It looked like Ultra Magnus was trying to crib off some answers written on his large, white hands. Only Ultra Magnus would never cheat. Though, Rodimus thought, if he did ever cheat, it probably would be that obvious and terrible. It took a cunning genius like Rodimus to cheat creatively. In fact, if he were to write crib notes for a conversation, he’d--

Oof. Wait. No, Oof was not the appropriate word for what just happened, which was Ultra Magnus leaning forward across the table, pressing his lip plates against Rodimus’s. They were smooth and silky--and of course they were. Seriously, there was no way Uptight Magnus would allow himself to have any burrs or scratches on his plating. He carried around a buffing rag in case his polish got smeared, for Primus’ sake! 

There must be a section in the Autobot Code about how to kiss, apparently, because Ultra Magnus was very good at it: his mouth warm and yielding, and Rodimus could feel the hitch in Ultra Magnus’s engine vibration through the contact, a soft, teasing little tickle. 

Eventually--and all too soon, if you asked Rodimus--he broke the kiss, with one last, almost lingering flick of his glossa. “That,” Ultra Magnus said, his voice husky. “I meant that.” 

***

Perceptor wasn’t exactly sulking in the corner, but that’s because the booth he was sitting in, didn’t, technically, have corners. He wasn’t sure why he’d even come. Being around mechs just made him feel lonely. And worse. He’d let Drift go off alone. Well, ‘let’ wasn’t really the word: he hadn’t stopped him. He’d tried to push his way through the jeering crowd, planning on asking one word--’why?’, but he’d never made it through that forest of elbows and anger. 

And now, he was gone, and all the other words Perceptor could have--should have--said rattled around his head, and even the bustle and chatter of Swerve’s astonishingly-crowded bar could drown them out. 

“Hey.” 

Perceptor’s head jerked up, reticle optic whirring, scanning to find the source of the voice. It wasn’t in front of him, or to his left. Nor to his right, until he looked down. “Ravage?” He was not sure he’d ever get used to Megatron being on the ship, much less Ravage. At least one tended to hear Megatron coming. 

The cat robot climbed up on the bench opposite Perceptor, extending his claws along the table, tilting his head as he stared. “Supposed to be a party.” 

“I suppose it is.” Perceptor shrugged. “I’m not much of an, erm, expert on parties.” 

“Yeah,” Ravage said, and was it Perceptor’s imagination, or did the other mech’s ears seem to droop? “Me, neither.” 

“Not even with the Decepticons?” Almost in spite of himself, and his funk, Perceptor found himself curious. 

A whuffling sound. “Decepticons didn’t treat beast mechs as bad as the Senate. Doesn’t mean they liked us.” Ravage turned and waved a paw at Skids, who’d somehow gotten turned into a server, and even-more-somehow gotten convinced to wear a frilled apron while doing it. Skids put a fresh glass of drink in front of the cat mech. 

“I see.” Sort of. He definitely saw Ravage curl a claw around the glass, pulling it over and taking a long drink. “And here?”

Ravage put the glass back down, carefully. For paws that were not cut out for manual dexterity, Perceptor thought, he did a masterful job. “Here?” One shoulder hitched up. “Bunch of Autobots.” 

“And Megatron,” Perceptor pointed out. 

“Yeah.” An almost wistful whistle. “Megatron. Such as he is.” 

“You don’t approve?”

“Never going to judge a mech for doing what he needs to do to stay alive,” Ravage said, though the tone of his voice said he was maybe doing just a little judging. “He’s just...weird. I don’t get him anymore.” 

“I know the feeling.” All too well, honestly. 

“Yeah?” A too-piercing gaze of a golden optic. 

It was Perceptor’s turn to shrug. “He’s not here, if that’s what you’re thinking. But I don’t know why he left or, well, anything.” And Perceptor hated not knowing something. 

“And you don’t get to ask him, huh.” Another careful paw-balanced drink. “Makin’ me feel less sorry for myself,” Ravage said, one corner of his mouth quirking up into what might, almost, be a smile. 

“Glad I could help,” Perceptor said, but he couldn’t really put the weight of glumness into his voice that he might have. Ravage was just as confused by Megatron’s change. It somehow made it feel less, well, lonely, honestly. Someone else didn’t understand. Someone else hurt because they didn’t understand, because something--someone--they had counted on had changed. 

Or maybe the other hadn’t changed, and they just had never realized they never got the other one right. Or--a hundred other avenues of thought opened up in Perceptor’s head, but he grew aware, through them, that Ravage was staring at him again. “What?” he said. 

“Nothin!” Ravage looked away, too quickly. “Just thinking that you’re a scientist, right?” 

“Yes…?” He couldn’t quite see the connection. 

“Hnff. Maybe I’ll come down and visit you sometime. You know. Just hanging out.” 

Suddenly, and for no reason Perceptor could figure, the idea of the beast mech hanging out in the corner of his lab didn’t sound like a bad thing at all. Kind of...comforting, really. “I-I’d like that. Really.” And even he could hear a sort of eagerness in his voice. 

“Groovy,” Ravage said, with something like a smirk. “Earth term, you know.” 

“I’ll take your word for it.” 

“Anyway…,” and here Ravage stood on the bench, all four feet, and stretched up, arching his spinal struts and stretching out his front claws. “I gotta go.”

“Go where?” Perceptor was just getting used to company. And the idea of conversation. 

“Yeah,” Ravage said, jumping down off the bench. “Gonna go talk to Megatron. See, you know, what I’ve been missing.” He walked a few paces forward, then stopped. “Here’s hoping you get to do the same someday.” 

***

“Well, I have to admit, for once, all my concerns seem to be unfounded,” Skids said, untying the lacy apron from around his waist, and laying it on the tray on top of the bar. “Whatever you cooked up is cooking up nothing but good feelings all around.” Everyone was holding hands, or laughing or talking and giving each other Meaningful Googly Optics...except for the few who had snuck off to probably share even more than good feelings. 

“Hey,” Swerve said, drawing himself up to his full height, which...still wasn’t very much. “Metallurgist! I do more than make weapons!” 

“Well, you’ve done good this time,” Skids said. “So what was in the apron you had me wear? Some kind of special metal shaving? Some magnetic field generator?” It had to do something. 

Swerve snerked. “It looked really cute on you.”

“That’s all?” Wait, what? Had he been made to look stupid...for no reason? Wait. Was that worse than being made to look stupid for some reason? 

Swerve slid another glass over to him. “You’re a good sport, Skids.” 

Who was Skids to refuse a good drink? 

***

Everyone had drifted off to happy sleep and happy dreams, except for Skids and Swerve, who were finishing up tidying up the place, when suddenly, the door to Swerve’s bar rang out--CLANG!!!--from a firm kick. It whirred open, grinding a bit at the new dent, to reveal, well, something. 

Whirl stood in the doorway, backlighting from the corridor catching in little glinty gleams all over all the Rodimus Stars he’d affixed to himself. 

“Whirl,” he said. “You look…uh. Blinding.” He almost said ‘ridiculous’ but he figured that angering a psycho copter was very much NOT on his list of things he wanted to do tonight. 

“Making an ENTRANCE!” Whirl yelled, leaping and landing in a sparkly combat crouch into the room. The empty room. “Hey. Where is everybody?” 

“They, uh, couldn’t handle your fabulousness,” Skids tried. 

“Yeah,” Swerve chipped in, trying to support what was a ludicrous theory, “We told them you were coming and they were all intimidated.” Well, they probably would have left, honestly, if they had heard Whirl was coming. 

“Really?” Whirl seemed unconvinced, but it was hard to read an expression from one big optic. Then he drew himself up. “Yeah, I could see that, actually. My fame preceded me!” 

“I’m...sure that’s it,” Skids said, with a sage nod. 

“Hey. Wait. I still get free drinks, right?” 

Skids and Swerve exchanged a glance, before Swerve nodded, beaming a high wattage smile “Course you can, crazy copter!”

“You sure this is a good idea?” Skids whispered, following Swerve behind the bar.

“Sure it is,” Swerve said. “Better idea than telling him he can’t have any, for one thing.” Well, that was solid logic, Skids thought, as Skids mixed up what looked like a double dose. “And besides. It’s huggy juice. Worst thing that’ll happen is he’ll go around hugging everyone.” 

“By all means, hand over my apron,” he said. Because you know what? Skids thought, that was a thing very, very much worth seeing. 

 

 

 


End file.
